Global firm NashTech migrates CRM from Microsoft Dynamics 365 to HubSpot 

The Challenge

NashTech suffered a disjointed marketing and sales team. The company needed to consolidate their technology stack, and their data into one system. Before the start of the project, NashTech's marketing and CSAT teams were already using HubSpot as their CRM, while their sales team used Microsoft Dynamics 365 (hereafter referred to as Dynamics 365).

Data to be migrated from Dynamics 365 to HubSpot included leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities), activities (notes, tasks, appointments, email/phone activity), and attachments (standard types).

One notable challenge is that properties such as leads and contacts are handled differently in Dyanmics 365 as opposed to HubSpot. In Dynamics 365, everything begins with a lead record. A lead is created first, and only later, if it’s qualified, it can convert into a contact, company or opportunity. In HubSpot, everything begins with the contact record. HubSpot treats contacts as the core object, and leads are simply a status or lifecycle stage on that contact, not a separate object.

Data integrity was a key focus, because Dynamics 365 separates leads and contacts but HubSpot merges them, it was critical that there were no duplicates created when the same person had been both a lead and a contact in Dynamics 365.

Related: The complete guide to calculating your HubSpot migration ROI

Migration scope & process

The scope of the project was extensive, particularly with regard to the testing of the data to be migrated. 

During the discovery phase of the project SpotDev endeavored to understand NashTech’s Dynamics 365 data and decide exactly how it should become HubSpot data. The team checked the tables and fields in Dynamics 365, made a clear map that shows which Dynamics 365 field goes into which HubSpot property, and reviewed that map with NashTech. 

What added complexity was that lead qualification rules, sales stages, ownership logic, pipeline structures were changed to coincide with HubSpot's object architecture.

SpotDev’s delivery team also agreed how records, relationships (who’s linked to what) and activities (notes, tasks, calls, emails) will be converted, and wrote a QA plan that spells out:

•  The acceptance rules (as an example: "at least 99.9% of Contacts must be migrated"),
• Test steps (run a count of contacts in Dynamics, run the same count in HubSpot, compare numbers) and;
• Checkpoints (moments in the project where you stop and decide: “Do we pass and move on, or do we fix problems first?”). 

Under the sandbox testing phase, SpotDev focused on data-level testing to ensure the migration would not impact active marketing/CSAT work. The testing started with configuring a HubSpot ‘sandbox’ to test the migration with replicated contact and company data (a subset of data) and to validate data mappings and logic determined under the discovery phase.

When marketing and sales aren't aligned because data doesn't sync properly, leads fall through cracks. If poor CRM adoption causes you to miss just 2% of opportunities, on a £10m pipeline, that's £200,000 in lost revenue - SpotDev

Full sandbox user acceptance testing (UAT) 

Prior to the full migration NashTech requested SpotDev to go beyond the initial data testing, create a full test copy of HubSpot and let NashTech’s key people try the system. 

This entailed a full data migration to the HubSpot sandbox, and a full process configuration for user acceptance testing (UAT).

The extended UAT included three key actions: 

1. Set up the test in HubSpot (the sandbox)
   
   SpotDev set up a copy of the HubSpot system with everything NashTech needed, including: 

• Custom record views to see how records look on the screen. 

• Teams & permissions to understand who can see and do what. 

• Pipelines & automations comprising sales stages and automatic actions. 

• Property logic which determines how fields are set up and used. 

• Workflows & active lists which are the automated processes and saved contact groups needed for testing. 

Related: SpotDev's integration simulator: The dangers of DIY integrations

2. Move all the data into the sandbox:
   
   SpotDev replicated all the agreed data into the sandbox (not just a small sample) so tests would be realistic.
   
   
3. Check everything and let users test:

• SpotDev did a full data check to make sure fields, counts and links matched. 

• NashTech’s key users then used the sandbox to test real tasks, looking at records, checking permissions, running pipelines and watching automations. This was to ensure the system worked the way the business needs. 

In short: SpotDev built a full test version of HubSpot, moved all the data, checked it, and had key users from NashTech run real-world tests to confirm everything works. 

The Results

Following the successful migration of NashTech’s data from Dyanmics 365 to HubSpot, and onboarding of its sales teams to HubSpot, SpotDev activated hypercare, which served to resolve any post-migration errors, consult on data strategy, migrate additional properties where needed. 

With data successfully migrated, and the applicable properties set up in HubSpot, NashTech has begun using HubSpot to manage deal activity.